It’s that time of year again, the time when one season ends and all the hype starts to build for the next season. And nowhere is preseason hype for 2012 more evident than in 2012 preseason college football rankings. Just like I did with the 2011 preseason rankings, the 2010 preseason rankings and the 2009 preseason rankings, I’m going to pool together all of the way too early 2012 preseason rankings and combine them to give you an idea of what the actual preseason rankings for 2012 will look like when they are released in August.
The AP Poll and the USA Today Coaches Poll are just the averages taken from the polls of random voters. Neither poll uses more than 60 or 70 voters. Now there aren’t 60 or 70 preseason polls out there just yet, but there are quite a few. So I have taken polls from Bleacher Report writers, Athlon Sports, Chat Sports, ESPN writers and anyone else I could find, as well as input my own poll. After adding up all the votes, here is what you can expect to see in the 2012 college football preseason rankings:

And there you have it, the 2012 preseason rankings. They are going to look darn close to this. This is the combined data from 12 different preseason polls that different people online have released. They are subject to change due to players declaring for the draft and recruiting getting underway. As of right now this is what you can expect. A few observations:

1. LSU will definitely be the No. 1 team in the 2012 preseason polls. However, USC and Alabama should get some first place votes and round out the top three.

2. It is very likely that five of the top ten will be SEC teams.

3. Michigan will definitely have its highest preseason ranking in a long time.

4. A lot of people are going to be disappointed in Florida State…again. No way should they be preseason top ten until they prove something.

5. A few teams have big question marks for me. Michigan State lost their QB. Virginia Tech lost their RB. Did Kansas State just have a fluke year in 2011? Can TCU compete in the Big 12?

6. The two big surprises to me were Louisville and Washington. I didn’t think they would get many votes, but they look to be just outside the top 25 at this point.

In case any of you are wondering, here are the 12 polls I found so you can see them for yourself. As a side note, the Big Lead poll only had a preseason top 20.

Again I would say that January is too early to tell what the 2012 preseason rankings will actually be as college football stays pretty busy during the off season. Once we know who is leaving, who is staying and who commits to where we can get a better idea. I know that since Robert Griffin III is going to the NFL a lot of the votes Baylor got will probably disappear. Other changes could happen. Either way, at least this gives us something to look forward to in 2012!